John Deere strike imminent?

BryceC

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But just look at self-driving cars - it's clear the technology is not there to replace humans.

We'll agree to disagree here. It's already better than humans. It's legal stuff holding it up now.
 

agrabes

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We absolutely know how to teach cars to improvise. The question then becomes more philosophical. Are we gonna let the car kill a pregnant woman in the street or the driver? We can teach it either way but we're running into those issues when it comes to robots. The tech of just regularly driving around is well established and proven, people are just afraid of 1 in a million stuff happening like that women who died in Arizona walking a bike across the street in pitch black darkness and got hit. A human would've hit her too but at least you have someone to blame in that scenario.

Who are you gonna blame when a self driving car kills someone in an impossible situation? The car company? The person who wrote the code? The "driver"? The person who is dead?

Tech itself not a big deal. What to do with it is everything.
We certainly don't. Unless you work in AI (I don't, but have a basic understanding of what machine learning does) or can explain how and why machine learning technology can teach computers to improvise and know what to do in unknown situations, then I'm going to take what you say as more hype. And you might be right at the end of the day and I might be wrong. But nothing has shown me that self driving cars are ready.

There are some cases where self driving cars perform the same as humans, but get penalized. There are plenty of others where they perform worse. The tech of regularly driving around is not well established. Self driving cars still struggle to stay in their lanes if the lane markers are faded out. Tesla's "summon" technology can't even get the car across a parking lot without issues. There are tons of issues with self driving technology.

Right now, self driving works in ideal, perfect scenarios where there are few opportunities for deviation from the norm - freeway driving. It also works in areas where it's ok for the car to basically freeze up and come to a complete halt if it doesn't know what to do (those small scale projects where cars are limited to low speeds in a few neighborhoods) and where there are relatively few variables that it has spent large amounts of time learning.

If it worked outside those specific scenarios and produced driving performance the same or better than an average human driver, it would be approved for use today.
 
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Althetuna

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I went CRTL+F on my post and saw I said "real returns" four times. I was very clear that I was talking about real returns -- that is, returns after inflation, which is what "real returns" means.

Real ROI for Social Security is between 1% and 2% depending on a number of factors (e.g., what exact time period you use, which is the same parameter that determines what the real ROI of equities are going to be). Not quite zero, but it sucks. Equities are still going to be 5%+ higher in the long term, though.

Which leads to the compounding... which leads to my worker having enough wealth to their name to live into their 140s while yours has enough income to barely make it past the age of 70.

Most Americans aren't even going to understand what is going on here. If you're going to force people to save for retirement (which is at least a defensible policy) then do it right -- give them some decent returns over the course of a lifetime. The policy wonks writing about the "glory" of the SS system undoubtedly have their own 401(k) plowed hard into the market. Lots of people in SS wouldn't like the fact they are forced to buy federal debt through their payroll contributions. I doubt you'd care about their opinion, and I'm not going to care if some people don't like that the S&P 500 has those "nasty/evil/bewitching/etc." tech companies in it.

CalPERS is the largest in the U.S., but it is hardly the only public or semipublic pension system that is in the market. Even larger than CalPERS is Federal Retirement Thrift for federal employees, and it has its assets in the market. Add up the dozens of them and you're talking much larger holdings.

As others pointed out, the U.S. is an international outlier amid peers for not investing its public pension system in the market. Japan does. South Korea does. Canada does. Most European countries do. They have much better-managed systems for not being so insanely adverse to any risk. This ultimately gives a better deal for their workers for their savings, which I thought was the point of the whole exercise.
My bad on missing your references on real returns but again I'd like to point out the numbers you are using are an educated guess and nothing more.

We can have better outcomes for those on the lower end of the income scale by indexing to retirement income and/or increasing the cap on payroll tax.

Finally, after a cursory search, I found instances of political influence in the Federal Retirement Thrift and the Canadian Penetion Plans. (See below)

Look I'm not completely close-minded regarding getting more aggressive with SS investment but with the already close relationship between business and goverment, I'm very skeptical about a plan that makes that relationship even closer by having the government directly own 7% (by your calulation) of the 500 largest US based companies.

Any plan would have to include almost complete autonomy from the federal goverment, thorough oversight via Congressional and third party audits, and strict regulatory enforcement.



 
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CloniesForLife

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"As for robots replacing everyone..."

Imagine you're a horse in the early 1900s. They had all sorts of jobs. And it only took a couple decades to be replaced by cars and tractors and trains. Yea there's technically still jobs for horses but not the millions as before
Did you read my post? I think that it will happen but it's further than people think. Not saying we shouldn't figure out solutions for how to handle it because it's absolutely going to continue to trend that way. I also said there will be more jobs where people will require more training than just turning a screw and we need to prepare our workforce for that as we currently lack a lot of people with that technical training
 

BCClone

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Not exactly sure.
I could probably get on board with the goverment investing SS Funds into index funds. I do not support eliminating SS and letting people just invest it.
Start taking small fractions and investing it in indexes. Then at retirement, subtract 50% of the gain from SS. Do it until the proceeds are greater. I’m guessing that they could be 50/50 and people would be better off in a couple generations
 

usedcarguy

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True, it doesn't run itself. Deere needs welders, CNC operators, drivers, etc. All of these people bring a skill that the is critical to operating the company, same as managing and overseeing the company is a skill that the CEO brings.

As you say, $14.5M is a drop in the bucket for JD to pay someone with management skills. My question is again, why are those skill deemed so much more valuable than a welder or a machinist? What justifies a 240:1 pay ratio between the CEO and the base level employee?

I'll take on that question. Simple supply and demand. Many factory jobs require skills that are not overly complicated and widely available. Can you read financial statements? Understand how geopolitical risks or currency fluctuations affect profits? Just in time supply chains? Marketing? Healthcare costs? Oversee an army of subordinates who are supposed to be putting that stuff together to make sure they're competent? Get it wrong and you've lost 500 times your salary. Get it way wrong, and you bankrupt the company and cost people their jobs.

People with those skills are highly sought after. It's just like the worker who leaves one company to go someplace else. Someone else was willing to pay them more. Just so happens that their W2 has more zeros on it than yours.
 

usedcarguy

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I agree, because capital is sufficiently skilled at exploiting labor in ways that it wasn’t back in 1950. And that bell can’t be un-rang; there will always be McKinsey and Wharton guys calling the shots now, short of a massive change in the economic legal structure.

The worker has more power now than at any time in history. In 1950, people didn't know any better and didn't have access to information that could make them far more productive and valuable in the market place. Today, you can flounder in a low skill job, barely apply yourself, and get by. Because people are too dumb and/or lazy to maximize the opportunities that are available today has nothing to do with capital exploiting labor.
 

deadeyededric

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I've toured JDDMW multiple times between school and my job. I've worked on multiple design projects for them, including the B40 project. Every time I went there, it always seemed to be this weird blend of dated manufacturing techniques and hi-tech equipment. It always amazes me what actually comes off those lines. Although, the on-board computers play such a large role in equipment theses days, and it's not like those are manufactured there.
Kemin Industries is probably one of the more high tech ones I've seen in DM.
 

usedcarguy

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As a retired Branch Local Union President. I’ve stated this a million times. A union is a necessary evil. If corporations treated ALL their employees well. You wouldn’t need unions.

Crappy corporations survive because employees keep choosing to work for them. Workers have all the power as a corporation can not make anything without employees.
 

bozclone

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It looks like it has doubled in value since COVID pandemic. I am curious to see if this increase is in line with other "American Based" companies.

It was very flat the 2 years prior to the pandemic. Something changed. I think the graph helps explain why his performance based bonuses increased so much.
 

usedcarguy

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It was very flat the 2 years prior to the pandemic. Something changed. I think the graph helps explain why his performance based bonuses increased so much.

In a nutshell, the excess capacity in the oil industry vaporized because of Covid. For a myriad of reasons, the capacity hasn't come back online as quickly as demand has. This has driven up the price of oil along with the price of corn and soybeans. (ethanol and biodiesel) It has gotten farmers (after several years of crap prices) to buy new equipment. IDK about 2018, but I assume they lost money as they did in 2019.
 

usedcarguy

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Yes. I understand compound interest. You keep saying SS generates no revenue. Where are you getting that? SS holds government debt. That generates income which would also be compounded.

In addition, I see major issues with how funds are invested and who makes those decisions. You keep mentioning investing in the S&P 500. What an advantage you're giving these companies over all others with the infusion of capital these companies will receive.

Sig is being generous on his description of SS. SS is a tax and welfare program. The "trust fund" nothing more than an accounting entry of the money it's spent. It's akin to you blowing your paycheck, writing yourself an IOU, calling it an asset, accruing interest on it, and then saying you still have the money and that it's invested. There is no market for that debt. No one can buy it, even if they wanted to.

The only way the government has to make good on those obligations is to tax others. The government taxed the money and then spent it regardless of how much it collected. No trust fund, no lock box. End of story.

You may believe the stock market is risky, but even if that money were to be invested in the S&P 500, Russell 2000, etc, it would be invested in real revenue producing assets. Compare that to the government that has less to show for itself every single year at year end as it goes further and further into debt.

The only way to fix it is to jack up taxes (again) and invest that portion of money in the market and begin the transition to a privatized sovereign wealth system...as well as upping the retirement age. It's going to be a tremendous **** sandwich, but the longer we wait, the more it's going to suck.
 

BCClone

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Not exactly sure.
In a nutshell, the excess capacity in the oil industry vaporized because of Covid. For a myriad of reasons, the capacity hasn't come back online as quickly as demand has. This has driven up the price of oil along with the price of corn and soybeans. (ethanol and biodiesel) It has gotten farmers (after several years of crap prices) to buy new equipment. IDK about 2018, but I assume they lost money as they did in 2019.
For grains it’s because of SA crop issues and other areas. Ethanol has been shutting down plants.